Tag: TMC Politics

The Doomsday Debt Ceiling

The last imbroglio over raising the debt ceiling may be over for the moment but the threat is still hanging on the horizon. Its use as a bargaining tool by the minority to circumvent laws they don’t like and elections they lost is an extremely dangerous tactic that effects not just the American economy but could bring down the global economy and irreparably harm the value of the dollar and America’s reputation of being a good investment. Even the financial and business sectors have called the debt ceiling toxic to economic health. The CEO of JP Morgan, Jamie Dimon, when asked about the consequences of not raising the debt ceiling responded, “you don’t want to know.” Martin Wolf, the chief economic commentator at The Financial Times called the debt ceiling law a “doomsday device” that should be repealed. In simple terms he explained why it is too dangerous to use:

The first is constitutional. In a recent article, Neil Buchanan of The George Washington University and Michael Dorf of Cornell (pdf) argue that a binding debt ceiling would create a “trilemma” for the president: “Ignore the debt ceiling and unilaterally issue new bonds, thus usurping Congress’s borrowing power; unilaterally raise taxes, thus usurping Congress’s taxing power; or unilaterally cut spending, thus usurping Congress’s spending power.” Thus, a binding debt ceiling would force the president to violate his obligation to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed”. The authors conclude that the president should choose the “least unconstitutional” course and ignore the debt ceiling. But, inevitably, whatever the president did would create a constitutional crisis. No responsible Congress would seek to put the president in that position.

The second reason why the debt ceiling is so dangerous is that the administration could not obey it in a non-destructive way. At some point between October 17 and the end of the month, the administration would lack the money to pay its bills. All choices would be dire.

Mr. Wolf explains that the claims of “prioritisation” by the Treasury Department to pick and choose which bills to pay would still be a default (pdf). Mostly, it is not possible since Treasury uses two different computer systems to pay its foreign and domestic bills. The states that the economics effect of choosing which to pay and which to allow to default would effect the Treasury bonds aming them a risky investment. The International Monetary Fund and World Bank heads meeting in Washington last week issued warnings of the grave dangers to the global economy.

In an interview with Bill Moyers’, Mr. Wolf gives his analysis of the debt ceiling crisis.



Transcript can be read here

Punting the Pundits: Sunday Preview Edition

Punting the Punditsis an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

The Sunday Talking Heads:

Up with Steve Kornacki: Steve’s guests this Sunday are msnbc.com’s Dafna Lizner; April Ryan with American Urban Radio Networks; BuzzFeed.com‘s Evan McMorris-Santoro ; Victoria DeFrancesco Soto, fellow at the Center for Politics at the LBJ School of Public Policy at the University of Texas ; NPR’s sports reporter Mike Pesca; historian Sean Wilentz; and msnbc’s Krystal Ball.

This Week with George Stephanopolis: Guests on “This Week” are House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi; Texas Sen. Ted Cruz; and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush.

The roundtable tackles all the week’s politics, including what comes next in the debate over the budget, with Rep. Donna Edwards (D-MD); Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL); ABC news political analyst Matthew Dowd; and New York Times White House correspondent Peter Baker.

Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer: Mr. Schieffer’s guests are Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA); Se. Lindsey Graham (R-SC); and the top economist for Moody’s Analytics, Mark Zandi.

His panel guests are Michael Gerson of the Washington Post; Stuart Rothenberg, editor and publisher of the Rothenberg Political Report; and Gerald Seib of the Wall Street Journal.

Meet the Press with David Gregory: The guests on this Sunday’s MTP are Treasury Secretary Jack Lew; Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu; Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY); Tom Coburn (R-OK); and Nobel Prize winning economist Robert Shiller.

The roundtable guests are New York Times Columnist David Brooks; Washington Post Columnist E.J. Dionne; host of CNBC’s “Closing Bell,” Maria Bartiromo; and NBC News Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent Andrea Mitchell.

State of the Union with Candy Crowley: Ms. Crowley’s guests are Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX).

Her panel guests are CNN Political Commentators, Democratic strategist Donna Brazile; Republican strategist Alex Castellanos and The New Yorker‘s Washington correspondent Ryan Lizza.

Punting the Pundits

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting thea Pundits”.

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

New York Times Editorial: Continuing Salmonella Outbreaks

Months after salmonella-contaminated chicken distributed by a California company sickened people, the dangerous food is still being sold around the country. This disturbing situation is the result of weak federal regulatory powers and the company’s irresponsibility. [..]

Aaron Lavallee, a spokesman for F.S.I.S., said that under statutes and case law, the agency cannot compel a recall in the Foster Farms case with the current evidence. Congress should hold hearings to determine if the Agriculture Department and its food safety service need more power to protect the public from potentially serious harm.

Charles Pierce: The Reign Of Morons: The Presidenting

Was it just me, or was that as pissed-off as we’re likely to see the president in public? Oh, he was still maddeningly vague about who really was behind the Reign Of Morons, all that talk about “the other side,” without using the words, “Republicans,” “conservatives,” or “raving nutballs,” and all that talk about the dangers of “the extremes,’ as though Bernie Sanders was as relevant to the events of the past two weeks as Ted Cruz was. I resemble that remark, sir, and my seconds will be calling on you. And what was that crack conflating “bloggers” with “radio talking-heads” I resemble that remark, sir, and my seconds will be calling on you.

More important, he’s still arguing for an economic compromise in the context of continuing austerity.  He talked about tax reform without tax increases. He talked about jobs without mentioning stimulus. And what he said about “entitlements” sent a cold chill down my spine since it was exactly what Paul Ryan would say. Which is what happens when you conclude that ” creating a budget” is not an “ideological exercise.” [..]

Nevertheless, the president made it plain that, if “the other side” wants to deal, it’s up to them to wring the crazy out of their rag in one quick hurry.

Ralph Nader: The Democrats Can’t Defend the Country From the Retrograde GOP

The Congress, that polls show the American people would like to replace in its entirety, has “kicked the can down the road” again, putting off the government shutdown until January 15 and another debt ceiling showdown until February 7. [..]

There is another story about how all this gridlock came to be, fronted by the question: “Why didn’t the Democrats landslide the cruelest, most ignorant, big-business-indentured Republican Party in its history during the 2010 and 2012 Congressional elections? (See “The Do Nothing Congress: A Record of Extremism and Partisanship”)

There are a number of answers to this fundamental political question. First and most obvious is that the Democrats are dialing for the same commercial campaign dollars, which beyond the baggage of quid pro quomoney, detours the party away from concentrating on their constituents’ needs, in a contrasting manner with the GOP.

Mark Gongloff: 4 Ways The Shutdown Deal Helps The Tea Party, Hurts Everyone Else

With the government back open and the hellstorm of a U.S. debt default delayed, you’re probably feeling pretty good about things, right? Like maybe we’ve thwarted the Tea Party’s quest to destroy the U.S. economy? Sadly, no.

Although House Republicans seem to have failed miserably to ransom the economy over Obamacare or “spending” or “disrespect” or whatever the last three weeks of idiocy and terror were about, they actually won, Bloomberg Businessweek points out in its latest cover story. The deal Congress struck to get the government back to work and raise the debt ceiling maintains a Tea Party pogrom happening since at least 2010, slashing spending at the fastest rate since the end of World War II, according to Businessweek. Rather than helping the economy, the latest debt deal is another disaster for it in four very specific ways: [..]

Dylan Ratigan: Those Who Nominate Dictate

Power, whether in an electoral system or a corporate boardroom, originates with the people who control the nomination of candidates — not with those who “vote” after this process is complete.

This is why the best-run companies consider a wide variety of potential nominees and include as many people as they can in the nomination process. This creates the highest possibility of hiring the best candidates. [..]

The extraordinary power of those who control the nominating process is not lost on power-hungry corporate board members. Why else would Carl Icahn risk billions to simply acquire board seats in hopes of introducing his nominees?

This strategy is definitely not lost on those who finance and nominate our political aspirants.

Henry A. Giroux: The Ghost of Authoritarianism in the Age of the Shutdown

In the aftermath of the reign of Nazi terror in the 1940s, the philosopher Theodor Adorno wrote:

   National Socialism lives on, and even today we still do not know whether it is merely the ghost of what was so monstrous that it lingers on after its own death, or whether it has not yet died at all, whether the willingness to commit the unspeakable survives in people as well as in the conditions that enclose them.

Adorno’s words are as relevant today as they were when he first wrote them. The threat of authoritarianism to citizen-based democracy is alive and well in the United States, and its presence can be felt in the historical conditions leading up to the partial government shutdown and the refusal on the part of the new extremists to raise the debt ceiling. Adorno believed that while the specific features and horrors of mid-century fascism such as the concentration camps and the control of governments by a political elite and the gestapo would not be reproduced in the same way, democracy as a political ideal and as a working proposition would be under assault once again by new anti-democratic forces all too willing to impose totalitarian systems on their adversaries.

Homeland Security Nominee an Assassination Apologist

A high up administration official, speaking anonymously, confirmed rumors that former Defense Department general counsel, Jeh Johnson, is President Barack Obama’s nominee to replace Janet Napolitano at the Department of Homeland Security. Secretary Napolitano stepped down in August to become president of the University of California.

In an article at Washington’s blog that outlines Johnson’s career at DoD, it is not surprising that as the top Pentagon lawyer Johnson was the lead apologist for the endless war on terror and the abuses of the Obama administration, including arguing for the justification of targeted assassinations including American citizens, as reported by the Associated Press in 2011.

U.S. citizens are legitimate military targets when they take up arms with al-Qaida, top national security lawyers in the Obama administration said Thursday.

***

The government lawyers, CIA counsel Stephen Preston and Pentagon counsel Jeh Johnson … said U.S. citizens do not have immunity when they are at war with the United States.

Johnson said only the executive branch, not the courts, is equipped to make military battlefield targeting decisions about who qualifies as an enemy.

In a speech at Yale Law School in 2012, Johnson said

Belligerents who also happen to be U.S. citizens do not enjoy immunity where non-citizen belligerents are valid military objectives.

Washington Blog also noted a major concern about Johnson’s Yale speech:

[..] Johnson invoked a lawsuit filed by Mr. Awlaki’s father before the killing that had sought an injunction against targeting his son, citing with approval a district judge’s decision to dismiss the case and saying that targeting decisions are not suited to court review because they must be made quickly and based on fast-evolving intelligence.

***

“The legal point is important because, in fact, over the last 10 years Al Qaeda has not only become more decentralized, it has also, for the most part, migrated away from Afghanistan to other places where it can find safe haven,” Mr. Johnson said.

This is particularly concerning since the U.S. wants to expand the assassination program to cover “ASSOCIATES of ASSOCIATES” of Al Qaeda … and blurs the lines between bad guys and average Americans.    This violates a little thing called the Fifth Amendment.

The Washington Post points out:

[A senior administration official] added that Johnson was “responsible for the prior legal review and approval of every military operation approved by the president and secretary of defense” during Obama’s first term.

That presumably includes supporting Al Qaeda in Libya.

This is the Wikipedia summation of Johnson’s tenure at the Defense Deaprtment that began in January of 2009:

As General Counsel of the Defense Department, Johnson was a major player in certain key priorities of the Obama Administration, and he is considered one of the legal architects of the U.S. military’s current counterterrorism policies. In 2009, Johnson was heavily involved in the reform of military commissions, and testified before Congress numerous times in support of the Military Commissions Act of 2009. [..]

In January 2011, Johnson provoked controversy when, according to a Department of Defense news story, he asserted in a speech at the Pentagon that deceased civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr. would have supported the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, despite King’s outspoken opposition to American interventionism during his lifetime. Johnson argued that American soldiers fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq were playing the role of the Good Samaritan, consistent with Martin Luther King Jr.’s beliefs, and that they were fighting to establish the peace for which Dr. King hoped. Jeremy Scahill called Johnson’s remarks “one of the most despicable attempts at revisionist use of Martin Luther King Jr. I’ve ever seen,” while Justin Elliott of Salon.com argued that based on Dr. King’s opposition to the Vietnam War, he would likely have opposed the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as the covert wars in Pakistan and Yemen. Cynthia Kouril has defended Johnson’s remarks, arguing in her blog that his speech has been misinterpreted.

In a February 2011, speech to the New York City Bar Association, Johnson “acknowledged the concerns raised” about the detention of alleged WikiLeaks source Private Bradley Manning and “stated that he had personally traveled to Quantico to conduct an investigation.” Human rights attorney and journalist Scott Horton wrote that “Johnson was remarkably unforthcoming about what he discovered and what conclusions he drew from his visit.

Johnson’s tenure as General Counsel was also notable for several high-profile speeches he gave on national security. In a speech he delivered at the Heritage Foundation in October 2011, Johnson warned against “over-militarizing” the U.S. government’s approach to counterterrorism: “There is risk in permitting and expecting the U.S. military to extend its powerful reach into areas traditionally reserved for civilian law enforcement in this country.”  

Finally, at the Oxford Union in England in November 2012, shortly before his resignation, Johnson delivered a widely noted address entitled “The conflict against al Qaeda and its affiliates: how will it end?” in which he predicted a “tipping point” at which the U.S. government’s efforts against al Qaeda should no longer be considered an armed conflict, but a more traditional law enforcement effort against individual terrorists.

Johnson’s speech in England was highly praised for the acknowledgment that the war on terror would eventually come to an end but, as Bob Deyfuss noted in his article at The Nation on Johnson’s nomination, actions speak louder that words:

Problem is, of course, until that as-yet-undefined moment when the “war” against Al Qaeda ends and the “counterterrorism effort against individuals” begins has not, it appears, yet occurred-at least in the eyes of the Obama administration. So, as a result, the White House continues to order drone strikes in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Somalia and elsewhere, launch Special Forces raids to kill or capture alleged Al Qaeda officials in Africa and Asia, and, in Afghanistan, insist on the continuing right of U.S. forces to seek and destroy Al Qaeda units in that country, even though experts say only about 75 members of the organization remain there. And, as long as the “war” continues, then everything that goes with it-extra-judicial detention of captured fighters, vast electronic surveillance of U.S. and foreign citizens by the National Security Agency and its partners, the Guantanamo prison, and the rest, continues too. All of that, in his Oxford speech, Johnson-as the then-DOD lawyer-was willing to support, justify and explain, even while admitting, as he did:

Some legal scholars and commentators in our country brand the detention by the military of members of al Qaeda as “indefinite detention without charges.” Some refer to targeted lethal force against known, identified individual members of al Qaeda as “extrajudicial killing.”

Indeed, The Wall Street Journal, in reporting Johnson’s 2012 speech, noted that in fact it was delivered primarily as a justification to the Europeans for Obama’s widely reviled counterterrorism policies:

Pentagon officials and legal experts also noted that Mr. Johnson chose to deliver the speech in the United Kingdom, in part to reassure European allies about the Obama administration’s legal justification for its continuing war on al Qaeda as well as other counterterrorism operations.

“It’s important that the DOD General Counsel has chosen to give this speech in Britain where many legal experts disagree with the concept that the U.S. is in a war with al Qaeda,” said John Bellinger, a former State Department legal adviser during the George W. Bush administration. “Most of the previous speeches by administration officials have been given inside the U.S.”

Anyone who thought that New York City police commissioner Ray Kelly was a terrible choice for head of DHS was just proven wrong. Don’t let Johnson;s support of the repeal of “Don’t Ask; Don’t Tell” fool you, he makes Kelly look like a good guy.  

Punting the Pundits

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting thea Pundits”.

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

Paul Krugman: The Damage Done

The government is reopening, and we didn’t default on our debt. Happy days are here again, right?

Well, no. For one thing, Congress has only voted in a temporary fix, and we could find ourselves going through it all over again in a few months. You may say that Republicans would be crazy to provoke another confrontation. But they were crazy to provoke this one, so why assume that they’ve learned their lesson?

Beyond that, however, it’s important to recognize that the economic damage from obstruction and extortion didn’t start when the G.O.P. shut down the government. On the contrary, it has been an ongoing process, dating back to the Republican takeover of the House in 2010. And the damage is large: Unemployment in America would be far lower than it is if the House majority hadn’t done so much to undermine recovery.

William K. Black: The Tea Party’s Tactical Brilliance and Strategic Incompetence

The Tea Party and its (non) think tanks have proven that they are tactically brilliant in manipulating the Republican Party, but strategically incompetent.  Today’s Senate Bill, which will be forced down the House Tea Party members’ throats, is the result of that strategic incompetence.  The Tea Party has learned that there are a few things many GOP elected officials are still unwilling to do.  Specifically, once the admittedly slow-witted House GOP leadership realized that the Tea Party had marched it to the far edge of a bridge to nowhere and the choices were (Option One: suicide) to keep marching off the bridge into the river (doing grave harm to the Nation and the world, ruining the GOP “brand,” returning the House to control by the Democratic Party, and threatening their own seats or (Option Two: truce) to stop and beg the Democrats for a truce – the GOP leadership would abandon the Tea Party and blame it for the humiliating rout. [..]

The Tea Party’s transcendent strategic failure however was picking Obamacare as the objective rather than the safety net.  I have been warning that Obama’s confidants have repeatedly revealed that Obama believes his best hopes of a positive “legacy” is what he calls the “Grand Bargain” (which I explained actually represented the “Grand Betrayal”).  The Grand Betrayal would raise some taxes, make materially deeper discretionary spending cuts in social programs, and make very large but opaque cuts in the safety net.  The Grand Betrayal would inflict triple damage on our Nation.  It would inflict even greater austerity, further weakening the recovery.  It would harm effective social programs at a time when they are most needed give the large increases in poverty.  It would harm the safety net directly and would serve to legitimize much deeper cuts in the future when the GOP controls the federal government.  Only a president that the GOP can portray as a “liberal” can make it safe for Republicans to attack the safety net and to work towards their great dream – privatizing Social Security so that Wall Street’s billionaires can get even wealthier by looting our retirement savings.

Obama has been eagerly seeking to inflict the Grand Betrayal since 2011.  The irony is that had he succeeded the resultant second recession would have made him a one-term president.  The Tea Party has prevented the deal by being unwilling to take “yes” for an answer from Obama.  The Tea Party could have skipped all the extortion and negotiated the Grand Betrayal with Obama.  The Republican leadership has attempted to negotiate the deal, but the Tea Party keeps blocking it.  Nevertheless, the Grand Betrayal is so available and so obviously in the political interests of the GOP and the Tea Party that the odds remain good that even the Tea Party will eventually say yes and give Obama the legacy he desires as the Democrat who led the unraveling of the safety net.  Obama may yet snatch defeat from victory and the Tea Party, when all else fails, may snatch victory from defeat by agreeing to the Grand Betrayal.

Dylan Ratigan: Debt and Taxes: Symptoms of Our Core Problem

The three charts below offer insight to the rottenness at the core of a banking and political system that relies entirely on the money of others–taxpayers, pensioners, those who pay insurance and, most disturbingly, future American earnings–to create short-term, private-sector income around housing and finance. With these profits, the banking system deals in politicians by offering political bulletproofing in the form of low-cost financing for housing using–you guessed it– other people’s money.

Until we deal with this problem, which is deeply entrenched in our election finance system, our government will continue to borrow and tax us to serve its short-term interests even as our lives become more expensive and offer less in return.

Robert Reich: What to Expect During the Cease-Fire

The war isn’t over. It’s only a cease-fire.

Republicans have agreed to fund the federal government through January 15 and extend the government’s ability to borrow (raise the debt ceiling) through Feb. 7. The two sides have committed themselves to negotiate a long-term budget plan by mid-December.

Regardless of what happens in the upcoming budget negotiations, it seems doubtful House Republicans will try to prevent the debt ceiling from being raised next February. Saner heads in the GOP will be able to point to the debacle Tea Partiers created this time around – the public’s anger, directed mostly at Republicans; upset among business leaders and Wall Street executives, who bankroll much of the GOP; and the sharply negative reaction of stock and bond markets, where the American middle class parks whatever savings it has.

Gary Younge: And so America’s skewed democracy lurches on toward its next crisis

A last-minute deal to raise the debt ceiling and end the shutdown solves nothing. US politics is stuck in chronic dysfunction

Because America is powerful, the world has to take notice of these self-inflicted crises. But because it has become so predictably dysfunctional and routinely reckless, they are difficult to take seriously or, at times, even fathom. To the rest of the world and much of America, this is yet another dangerous folly. The fact that the nation did not default should come as cold comfort. The fact that we are even talking about it defaulting is a problem.

This particular flirtation with fate was driven by a visceral opposition to the moderate provision of something most western nations take for granted: healthcare. The reforms they opposed had been been passed by the very body of which they are a member and had been been approved by the US supreme court, the guardian of the very constitution they claimed to be defending. For this, they started a fight they never had the numbers to win and carried on waging it long after it was clear they had lost.

Richard (RJ) Eskow: Winning the Peace: The Post-Shutdown Challenge

It’s a major victory. The shutdown’s ending, the government isn’t defaulting (at least not yet), and Democrats didn’t yield in the face of threats and bullying. But what happens next could shape our fate for many years to come.

Congratulations are in order. The President vowed not to negotiate over the debt ceiling, and he was as good as his word. He stood up to the closet ideologues of the artificial “center,” the ones who unwisely argued that being the “adult in the room” meant surrendering to the tantrums of children. [..]

But the celebrations are premature. Yes, the public is furious at Republicans – Tea Partiers and plain-vanilla GOP extremists alike – for causing so much damage in pursuit of an ideology so far outside the political mainstream. Most Americans have rejected the things Republicans stand for: their values, their priorities, and their apocalyptic economic vision.

No, Harry, Not Even For Revenue Increases

In an interview with Huffington Post after the “cease fire” bill that postponed the latest manufactured debt ceiling/government funding crisis was passed and signed, Senate Majority Leader HArry Reid (D-NV) said this:

“I would like to suggest that maybe the Republicans aren’t too happy with next year’s sequestration. Who does it hurt, non-defense? I get an extra billion dollars this year compared to [last] year. Defense? They lose $23 billion,” Reid said, referring to the Pentagon. “So I would think there should be some people among the Republicans in the House and Senate who would say we should take a look at that.” [..]

Reid also said that he would make sure to protect Social Security against attempts to trade cuts for sequestration relief, calling such a bargain “a stupid trade.”

“That’s no trade. We are going to affect entitlements so we can increase defense spending? Don’t check me for a vote there. I’m not interested in that,” he said.

“It is the most successful social program in the history of the world. The program is not about to go broke, so take it easy on Social Security,” Reid said.

OK. That’s reassuring until he kept talking:

If Republicans want to trim Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid, Reid said, they’d have to give on tax revenue in exchange. Asked specifically if the deal must be revenue for entitlements, he said: “Yes, and we call it mandatories.”

No, Harry, not even for revenue increases. Cuts to the social safety net of millions of Americans is NOT a bargaining chip to raise taxes.

Punting the Pundits

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting thea Pundits”.

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

New York Times Editorial Board: The Republican Surrender

The Republican Party slunk away on Wednesday from its failed, ruinous strategy to get its way through the use of havoc. Hours away from an inevitable market crash, it approved a deal that could have been achieved months ago had a few more lawmakers set aside their animus. After President Obama signs the bill, the government will reopen after more than two weeks of shutdown, and the threat of a default will be lifted.

The health care reform law will not be defunded or delayed. No taxes will be cut, and the deal calls for no new cuts to federal spending or limits to social welfare programs. The only things Republicans achieved were billions of dollars in damage to the economy, harm to the nation’s reputation and a rock-bottom public approval rating.

Topher Spiro: The Myth of the Medical-Device Tax

IN the last few days of negotiations in Congress, repeal of the Affordable Care Act’s tax on medical devices emerged as a key Republican demand. The medical-device industry waged an intense lobbying campaign – even garnering the support of many Democrats who favored the law – arguing that the tax would stifle innovation and increase health care costs.

This argument is doubly disingenuous. Not only can the medical-device industry easily afford the tax without compromising innovation, but the industry’s enormous profits are a result of anticompetitive practices that themselves drive up medical-device costs unnecessarily. The tax is a distraction from reforms to the industry that are urgently needed to lower health care costs.

The medical-device industry faces virtually no price competition. Because of confidentiality agreements that manufacturers require hospitals to sign, the prices of the devices are cloaked in secrecy. This lack of transparency impedes hospitals from sharing price information and thus knowing whether they are getting a good deal.

Mohamed A. El-Erian: What Follows This Congressional Deal?

The good news — and it is very good news — is that Congress seems to have finally struck a deal that would reopen the government and dodge a debt default. In doing so, lawmakers have avoided (at least for now) a crisis of their own creation that would have tipped the country into recession, caused substantial job losses, and further eroded America’s global standing — all of which would have also undermined national security. [..]

What emerged from Congress on Wednesday speaks to stop-gap measures born of exhaustion and political miscalculations, and prompted by national (and global) outrage.

By kicking the can down the road, our bickering Congress has created a temporary window for — at least in theory — more rational debate and decision-making. According to available information, the government would now be funded until January 15th and the debt ceiling would be pushed back to February 7th (with the ability to use extraordinary measures pushing that deadline to the spring).

Dean Baker: Republicans Are Delusional About US Spending and Deficits

The story of out-of-control debts and deficits is just plain wrong. US deficits have fallen in the past four years

It is understandable that the public is disgusted with Washington; they have every right to be. At a time when the country continues to suffer from the worst patch of unemployment since the Great Depression, the government is shut down over concerns about the budget deficit. [..]

Going to the wall for something that is incredibly important is a reasonable tactic. However, the public apparently did not agree with the Republicans. Polls show that they overwhelmingly oppose their tactic of shutting down the government and risking default over Obamacare. As a result, the Republicans are now claiming that the dispute is actually over spending.

Anywhere outside of Washington DC and totalitarian states, you don’t get to rewrite history. However, given the national media’s concept of impartiality, they now feel an obligation to accept that the Republicans’ claim that this is a dispute over spending levels.

Bill Blum: The Supreme Court Could Get Even Worse This Term

Even allowing for last term’s 5-4 decisions on gay marriage or the equally narrow 2012 approval of Obamacare’s individual mandate, the Supreme Court has amassed a profoundly right-wing record under the stewardship of Chief Justice John Roberts on issues including corporate accountability, campaign finance and voting rights. And if the oral arguments conducted the first two weeks of the court’s current term are any indication, the record is likely only to harden.

It’s easy enough to analyze the court’s opinions one case at a time, identifying how each affirms or alters specific areas of law. It’s also relatively easy, as Mother Jones magazine has shown, to measure the court’s political slant statistically by adding up the number of conservative rulings issued each term or tallying the number of prior liberal court precedents the tribunal overturns.

 

John Nichols: Paul Ryan’s Peddling a ‘Shock Doctrine’ Cure

Forget about death and taxes.

If you are looking for certainties in American politics, count on this one: If a crisis of governing develops, the advocates for cutting Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid will arrive with a plan to resolve the standoff by balancing budgets on the backs of America’s most vulnerable citizens.

Cue Paul Ryan.

The House Budget Committee chairman, a Republican from Janesville, has for the better part of a decade been the most determined advocate on Capitol Hill for the Wall Street agenda that says earned-benefit programs should be reshaped as investment vehicles and voucher schemes that will benefit brokers and the health insurance industry.

Congressional Game of Chicken: Hostages Get A Reprieve

President Barack Obama signed the bill early Thursday morning that reopens the government and raises the debt ceiling, officially ending the 16-day shutdown, the White House said.

CNN Breaking News

If anyone thinks that the latest budget crisis is over, or that there was a victory, they are living in the bubble of a fool’s paradise.

This has cost the economy billions, hurt countless individuals in many ways for a deal that merely kicks the can down the road. Come January, unless a long term budget deal is passed, another continuing resolution (CR) will be needed. February is even more ominous when again the US hits its borrowing limit.

Obama should have stood his ground last year when he caved and gave the Republicans the sequester which is far more damaging to the economy than the ACA. Look what happened to the Republican brand. That could have been last year and the Democrats might have stood a better chance of increasing its majority in the Senate and gaining even more than 8 seats in the House.

There is no sense in rehashing what can’t be undone. The Democrats now need to deal with repairing the damage of the last 5 years continuing to hold firm on the budget, ending the sequester cuts for more reasonable spending that will benefit the majority of Americans and finally killing the biggest threat to the US and World economies, the debt ceiling cap.

Time to take the bullets out of the gun.

Punting the Pundits

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting thea Pundits”.

Wednesday is Ladies’ Day.

Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt

Katrina vanden Heuvel: In debt deal, Republicans aren’t surrendering anything

The government remains closed. The unimaginable – default on our national debt – looms, with unknown but foreboding consequence. Tea party Republicans remain willing to undermine trust in the full faith and credit of the United States in this unnecessary and manufactured crisis. And for some, the impending calamity seems to increase rather than temper their lunacy. At the right-wing Values Voter Summit this week, Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Tex.) claimed that if Republicans refuse to lift the debt ceiling and the United States defaults, it would be an impeachable offense by the president. Go figure.

In Washington, this folly is measured by poll numbers. Republicans, and particularly the tea party, are “losing” because their public approval numbers have plummeted. Republicans are said to have “surrendered,” since they abandoned their threat to default on U.S. debts unless Democrats agreed to defund or delay Obamacare. Now Senate Republicans are offering to reopen the government and fund it at current levels only until mid-January. Supporters of the deal argue that it would allow for negotiations on a real budget before the next harsh across-the-board sequester cuts kick in, but it means that Republicans will use the threat of the sequester – and the next round of the debt ceiling showdown – to exact longer-term cuts in Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security benefits.

Surrender? Any more “victories” like this, and Democrats will end up paying annual tribute to Republican party coffers. If Democrats accept these terms, it will only encourage Republicans to hold the country hostage over and over again.

Karin Higgins: Congress and the President: Just Because You Were Bullied, Don’t Take It Out on Our Seniors

Let’s try to remember a lesson we all should have learned as kids. Just because you were picked on by the neighborhood bully is no excuse to go home and kick the dog or punch your little brother.

Maybe some inside the Beltway need a refresher course. Just because a handful on the right have shut down government and threatened default on the debt that’s no excuse to embrace proposals to slash Medicare and Social Security.

But that is exactly what is on the agenda, the “compromise” reward for those who engineered the lunacy of the last two weeks with the attempt to reverse the results of last November’s election by refusing to fund government services or pay the debt unless the Affordable Care Act is defunded or repealed.

Mary Botari: Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson Reach New Heights of Hypocrisy in “Fix the Debt” Ad

The Campaign to Fix the Debt, the $40 million dollar astroturf “supergroup” that CMD exposed on the cover of the Nation magazine, has shifted into high gear in an effort to leverage the debt ceiling crisis into cuts to Social Security and Medicare.

Today, the group launched a six figure TV ad buy that reaches new heights of hypocrisy — and that is saying a lot.

Former U.S. Senator Alan Simpson and Morgan Stanley board member Erskine Bowles have long been spokespersons for Fix the Debt. The “folksy” Simpson: “For cryin’ out loud, Erskine, who isn’t fed up with what’s goin’ on in Washington?” The Bowles tsk tsk: “These politicians are playing games jerking our country around from crisis to crisis.”

This is rich from a group that has been hyping a debt and deficit crisis since its launch in July 2012, even though the deficit has been cut in half in recent years. In January 2013 Fix the Debt steering committee member and former Tennessee Governor Phil Bredesen admitted that Fix the Debt’s strategy was to create an “artificial crisis” to achieve a “grand bargain” on Medicare and Social Security.

Heather Mallick: 2013 Resembles 1927, A Terrifying Year

2013 is looking a lot like 1927, a scary year in American history.

I don’t know why you all seem to think it’s 2013. Clearly it is 1927. I just read Bill Bryson’s book on the American summer of that year – the glorious writer has an astonishing knack for narrative even on sedative subjects like baseball – and it fell from my nerveless fingers when I realized what he was trying to convey.

The world is holding 1927 all over again.

This is soul-chilling. I have had this Twilight Zone sensation before and I always restrain myself from asking total strangers if they notice anything funny about people’s hair and the background music. In London it is always next year. In Zara with its nylon dresses and boxy purses, it is still 1965, but in Topshop it’s 1975, just as it is in downtown Edmonton. In Harry Rosen it is the mid-’90s, the last time men were forced to wear suits, and at work, it is always Grade 7 all over again. Retro is in. I go into people’s homes now and wonder why they are trying to recreate my parents’ rec room.

Heidi Moore: In praise of empiricism: a Nobel prize for everyday economics

Fama, Shiller and Hansen are worthy winners for focusing on the messy reality of market behaviour, rather than abstract theories

This summer, I took a look at my retirement account. It was pathetic.

Scattered across a random group of mutual funds – growth, value, tech, emerging markets, what have you – my retirement dollars were all making skimpy profits, even though the market was good. The stockpickers running those funds had one job – to do better than the S&P 500 – and they were clearly failing.

I moved my entire retirement nest egg into an index fund, which essentially just imitates the S&P 500 with no stockpicking or other funny stuff. The result: my little nest egg ballooned by thousands of dollars in just a few months.

I forgot to thank one man for my move: Eugene Fama. The man who won the Nobel memorial award in economics Monday discovered years ago that stockpicking was a fool’s game; you can’t really beat the market. An entire industry of index funds exists because of Fama’s research.

His two co-winners are also men who care what happens in the real world. Economics has a reputation as wonky, nerdy discipline that loves theories that are pure and distant from humanity, like cottony clouds, and hates to get its hands dirty with real-world concerns. This year’s Nobel prize in economics is finally, a victory for the study of human nature.

Rachael Dunlop: Anti-vaccination activists should not be given a say in the media

99% of experts support the view that childhood vaccinations are safe and effective, whilst 1% do not. Why, then, would the mainstream media give any kind of air time to science deniers?

Imagine this scenario: you’re covering a story on circumnavigating the globe so you interview a geographer to get their views, but for the sake of balance you also get a representative from the Flat Earth Society. Seems absurd right?

Sure. But as a scientist, I see this kind of ridiculous “balance” happening all the time in stories concerning science and medicine. And it’s not just bad because it insults my delicate scientifical sensibilities, research now tells us that it can actually be harmful.

Let’s look at vaccination as an example. Assume that 99% of experts support the view that childhood vaccinations are overwhelmingly safe and effective, whilst 1% do not. Why then would the mainstream media run stories where a doctor or scientist offers a qualified, considered, researched, opinion and then turn to a wing nut who’s spent a couple of hours on Dr Google and has decided vaccines are bad, m’kay?

There’s a term to describe giving more time to opposing view points than the evidence actually supports – false balance.

So okay, my “feelpinions” might get hurt, but does it really matter otherwise? Well yes, it turns out it does.

The NSA: Bigger Is Not Better

In the case of the NSA’s scooping up and storing all that private data, they ran into a glitch, too much information makes the job of surveillance harder

The volume of NSA contacts collection is so high that it has occasionally threatened to overwhelm storage repositories, forcing the agency to halt its intake with “emergency detasking” orders. Three NSA documents describe short-term efforts to build an “across-the-board technology throttle for truly heinous data” and longer-term efforts to filter out information that the NSA does not need.

Spam has proven to be a significant problem for NSA – clogging databases with data that holds no foreign intelligence value. The majority of all e-mails, one NSA document says, “are SPAM from ‘fake’ addresses and never ‘delivered’ to targets.”

In fall 2011, according to an NSA presentation, the Yahoo account of an Iranian target was “hacked by an unknown actor,” who used it to send spam. The Iranian had “a number of Yahoo groups in his/her contact list, some with many hundreds or thousands of members.”

The cascading effects of repeated spam messages, compounded by the automatic addition of the Iranian’s contacts to other people’s address books, led to a massive spike in the volume of traffic collected by the Australian intelligence service on the NSA’s behalf.

After nine days of data-bombing, the Iranian’s contact book and contact books for several people within it were “emergency detasked.”

LOL. The NSA has a spam problem.

Meanwhile, the head of the NSA, Gen. Keith Alexander has had to admit to the Senate Intelligence Committee that he lied back in June about those 54 terrorists plots he claimed were “thwarted” by the agency’s phone surveillance program.

Alexander admitted that only 13 of the 54 cases were connected to the United States. He also told the committee that only one or two suspected plots were identified as a result of bulk phone record collection.

Leahy was not happy. “We’re told we have to (conduct mass phone surveillance) to protect us, and the statistics are rolled out that they’re not accurate,” he said. “It doesn’t have the credibility here in the Congress, it doesn’t have the credibility with this chairman and it doesn’t have the credibility with the country.”

Over at the Wall Street Journal, in an op-ed behind a paywall, the committee chair, Sen Dianne Feinstein trotted out the old “9/11 be very afraid” canard and repeated the debunked Alexander lie.

Consider the case of 9/11 hijacker Khalid al-Mihdhar, who was being watched by the CIA while he was in Malaysia. U.S. intelligence agencies failed to connect the dots before the attack to recognize that al-Mihdhar had flown with (future) hijacker Nawaf al-Hazmi to Los Angeles in January 2000.

Intelligence officials knew about an al Qaeda safe house in Yemen with ties to al-Mihdhar as well as the safe house’s telephone number, but they had no way of knowing if anyone inside the U.S. was in contact with that phone number in Yemen. Only after 9/11 did we learn that al-Mihdhar, while living in San Diego, had called the safe house. [..]

Working in combination, the call-records database and other NSA programs have aided efforts by U.S. intelligence agencies to disrupt terrorism in the U.S. approximately a dozen times in recent years, according to the NSA. This summer, the agency disclosed that 54 terrorist events have been interrupted-including plots stopped and arrests made for support to terrorism. Thirteen events were in the U.S. homeland and nine involved U.S. persons or facilities overseas. Twenty-five were in Europe, five in Africa and 11 in Asia.

Can everyone say say Richard Clark.

At Techdirt, Mike Masnick points out none of what Sen. Feinstein said is true:

First off, as has been explained over and over again, the intelligence community already had certain tools in place to discover such phone calls. The problem wasn’t that they didn’t have the information — they did. It was that they failed to “connect the dots.” In other words, they had too much information which obscured the important information they needed. [..]

Note the all important “and other NSA programs” language here. Also the use of “terrorist events” not plots. And, remember, those “thirteen events… in the U.S. homeland,” have since been whittled down to only one that actually relied on the call records program that she’s defending — and that wasn’t a terrorist plot but a cab driver in San Diego sending some cash to a Somali group judged to be a terrorist organization.

So, we have elected representatives and high paid appointees blatantly lying and getting away with it to protect their turf with no one is holding them accountable,

Load more